Heavy Networking
Packet Pushers
Heavy Networking is an unabashedly nerdy dive into all things networking. Described by one listener as "verbal white papers," the weekly episodes feature network engineers, industry experts, and vendors sharing useful information to keep your professional knowledge sharp and your career growing. Hosts Ethan Banks & Drew Conry-Murray cut through the marketing spin to explore what works—and what doesn't—in networking today, while keeping an eye on what's ahead for the industry. On air since 2010, Heavy Networking is the flagship show of the Packet Pushers podcast network.
Episodes
Mentioned books
12 snips
Oct 16, 2026 • 1h
HN846: How Meter Built a Topology Design Tool to Speed Deployments from Hours to Seconds (Sponsored)
Alex La Fazia, a network engineer skilled in architecture and deployment, and Daniel Kaczmarczyk, a software engineer building infrastructure automation, explain Meter’s topology design tool. They explore turning simple site inputs into complete installation plans, encoding networking expertise in deterministic rules, handling physical-site edge cases, and keeping designs aligned with deployed networks. They also discuss graph-based validation, AI-assisted development, and practical advice for starting network automation.
Oct 9, 2026 • 59min
HN845: Real Life Use Cases for BGP Monitoring Protocol (BMP)
Bart Dorlandt, a Netherlands-based network engineer and automation specialist, explores real-world BGP Monitoring Protocol deployments. He discusses customer-facing prefix visibility, pre- and post-policy routing data, automated mismatch detection, and integrating BMP with routing software. The conversation also covers Kafka transport, silent failures, containerized Junos labs, handling massive route volumes, and plans for historical analysis.
Oct 2, 2026 • 1h 7min
HN844: Multipath Reliable Connection (MRC)
Eric Davis, a Broadcom master engineer focused on RDMA and AI networking, and Rip Sohan, a Broadcom distinguished engineer specializing in high-performance data-center fabrics, explore Multipath Reliable Connection. They discuss packet spraying across ECMP paths, tail latency in AI collectives, self-healing RDMA, lossy Ethernet, selective retransmission, congestion feedback, and MRC’s role as a practical bridge to Ultra Ethernet.
24 snips
Sep 25, 2026 • 59min
HN843: From Network Engineer to Network Architect with Kevin Nanns
Kevin Nanns, a county-government network architect and creator behind Adjacent Node, discusses moving from hands-on engineering to strategic architecture. He explores broader design decisions, budgets, meetings, accountability, and leading former peers. Kevin also shares how TikTok and other platforms make networking approachable, plus advice for engineers considering the leap.
6 snips
Sep 18, 2026 • 1h 13min
HN842: How Network Engineers Can Prepare for a Post-Quantum World
Bill Dockery, a network security architect specializing in cryptography, and Scott Robohn, a network automation practitioner, explore the looming quantum threat. They discuss Q-Day, harvest-now-decrypt-later attacks, NIST’s post-quantum algorithms, and how larger keys could affect certificates, routing, tunnels, and performance. The conversation also covers crypto-agility, cryptographic inventories, observability, and preparing network infrastructure for upgrades.
Sep 11, 2026 • 59min
HN841: HPE Melds Apstra and Mist for Self-Driving Data Center Networks (Sponsored)
In this sponsored episode, Kyle Baxter and Sridhar Katere from HPE join Drew to talk about automating enterprise data center networks. They discuss how HPE integrates its Apstra and Mist products to bring AI ops and self-driving capabilities into data center operations. They also break down how HPE leverages the different strengths of each platform,... Read more »
10 snips
Sep 4, 2026 • 51min
HN840: How to Make a Technology Buying Decision
Sian Morgan, a former service-provider engineering leader and technology industry analyst, explores smarter ways to evaluate IT purchases. They discuss aligning technical capabilities with business goals, seeing connectivity and applications as one solution, cutting through vendor hype, calculating total costs and ROI, and using proofs of concept to test products before committing.
Aug 28, 2026 • 56min
HN839: Why Flows, Packets, and DDI are All Critical for Operational Effectiveness (Sponsored)
If you think of BlueCat as just an IPAM or DDI company, think again. BlueCat acquired LiveAction in 2024, and since then, they’ve been working to integrate LiveAction’s network observability capabilities with the DDI portfolio. In this sponsored episode, Ryan Grande, Field CTO at BlueCat, is here to dig into how network observability and DDI... Read more »
4 snips
Aug 21, 2026 • 1h 5min
HN838: Meet Mr. Packets – Building Your Own Agentic AI Team Member
Hank Preston, Distinguished Architect at Cisco and former DevNet lead who builds network automation and AI experiments. He walks through building an agentic AI teammate called Mr. Packets. Topics include required network access and tools, the four agent building blocks, handling non-determinism and token costs, a live ticket-triage demo, security risks, and why hands-on experimentation matters.
Aug 7, 2026 • 1h 5min
HN837: Agentic AI to Reduce MTTR
Eduard Dulharu, founder of an AI startup building agentic AI for networking and MTTR reduction, and experienced network automation practitioner. He explains deterministic workflows, YAML single-source-of-truth catalogs, and fine-tuned local models. They discuss digital-twin ContainerLab testing, confidence scoring and data-quality gates, and how agents can run end-to-end troubleshooting while keeping engineers in control.
